the difference between
by finaljoy
Summary: To Karen, things were either one thing, or they were the other. Black or white morality ruled her life, because it was clean cut and reliable. Even the soulmate system agreed: either you met your soulmate and saw color, or you didn't. And then she met her soulmate. And then she realized it was James Wesley. (colorblind!soulmates au, companion to straightforwardly)


_AN It has been almost six years since this whole tragedy graced my screen and almost three and a half years since I came up with this whole dumb concept, but I will FIGHT and DIE for the insane dynamic between Karen and Wesley._

_This is a companion piece to _straightforwardly_, but can be read as a stand alone._

* * *

"I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair."

—Harlan Coben

* * *

Karen, despite appearances, liked to keep things tidy. She liked things being simple. She liked 'yes or no' questions, rather than surveys that had a myriad of ambiguities that made her question herself. Things were complicated enough when she didn't have to struggle over degrees of correctness.

That was why she moved to New York. A fresh start, a hard reset, a new chance. That was why she enjoyed working at Nelson and Murdock. The people they helped or fought against were either good or they were bad (matt's damnably decent nobility wouldn't let it be any other way). That was why she both loved and hated seeing in black and white. Things were either in color or they weren't, she either found her soulmate or she didn't, either she had access to one of the most tantalizing parts of life or she was left in the dark. Simple, simple, simple.

Her pragmatic father had raised her to be a trooper, no matter how improbable her ideas may have been. So she kept stumbling on, telling herself she was fine, she would be fine, it was fine. And for a second, it felt that maybe, _maybe _she actually was. She had escaped the misery of Vermont. She was charmed by Foggy's delightful earnesty and wise yet upbeat attitude, was enchanted by Matt's delicate melancholy and desperate need to save people.

The idle, day-dreamy part of Karen wondered if maybe she could settle down, make her own little slice of happiness without the drama and mystery of finding a soulmate. She had never given much thought to becoming achromic, one of those brave few who decided to live their lives without the complication of a soulmate, who decided that love existed outside of the colors of the rainbow. She could certainly try with Foggy. After all, he clearly adored the world and seemed to like her, despite his normally impeccable judgment.

As a little girl, Karen had spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to finally meet her soulmate. She had been excited about all of the possibilities; friendship, co-conspirator, life-long love, it could be _anything. _She had planned things out in her diary, listing out the endless, yes or no options. Man. Woman. Older. Younger. Foreign. American. Everything under the sun, it seemed.

But now, years later, she realized that nine-year-old her hadn't accounted for seemingly the most important category: Good. Evil.

* * *

James Wesley walked through the door, smacking her with the sharp blue of his suit (she knew it was blue because her friend had described it once; blue like tears, blue like a rainy day, blue like standing in the freezing cold and refusing to go inside. he was wearing blue.). Her eyes had widened for a second, shock making it impossible for her to move. His expression barely flickered as he stepped into the office, maybe he didn't notice, maybe she was wrong, maybe it wasn't him, but then he gave a quick scan of the Nelson and Murdock team. He zeroed in on her dumb expression and his eyes narrowed just a bit, then he ignored her. Business as usual.

It should have been a warning sign. He didn't tell them his _name_, she had to find that out later. She should have known, she should have _known_ there was something wrong from the first. Then again, _a lot_ in Karen's life should have been warning signs, but she could be amazingly _stupid_ when it came to her own wellbeing. And others.

Wesley was like one of those animals that attacked when they smelled fear. But instead of using teeth or claws, he bludgeoned with their own weakness. For a moment, Karen thought maybe she had it all wrong (he was being professional rather than cold, this really wasn't the place to make a scene, she was the one being unreasonable here), he parried Matt's suspicion with such polite grace, after all. And then he set aside all of that grace and took a filthy shot at her for no reason at all.

"I'm curious about your clientele," he said with a thoughtful pause. "Do they all end up working for you after you get them off for murder, or just the pretty ones?"

Karen stared at him, unable to breathe. He thought she was pretty—he hadn't even hesitated—he knew she had been charged with murder—he was her _soulmate_—he was looking at her why was he _looking_ at her—he was her soulmate _and he acted like this. _She thought she might accidentally break the bland blue pen she had in her hand.

"Will you, uh, give us a minute, please?" Matt asked, voice pleasant as always, even as he pulled on his boxing gloves.

Karen drifted to her desk and stared at the dull, bluish tinge to her shoes (holy shit. _holy shit holy shit holy SHIT)_. She wasn't sure what scared her more: the fact that her damn _soulmate_ turned out to be a slick shit in a suit, or the fact that he clearly had the power to know seemingly everything about them before making contact.

He didn't look at her as he left the office. She stared at his back, mouth open, trying to say something, _begging _herself to say something, but the words were frozen in her throat. He didn't even _try_ to speak to her. He came and he left and Karen had nothing more than a waft of his cologne and a smudge of now blue ink on her fingers.

It was almost unsurprising, if she was being honest. Pretty much everything else in her life turned out to be a nightmare. Having a horrible soulmate wasn't too off the mark.

The colors were slow to come. First blue in a few shades, slowly varying as the days dragged by. Then red, then yellow. It took _weeks._ Karen grit her teeth as each day dragged by, stabbing holes in her binary philosophy. Either she was supposed to see color, or she wasn't—none of this little here, little there bullshit.

She spent long nights scouring the internet for answers, curled up under her blankets, her fresh from the shower hair soaking her pillow, her head spinning because she had a soulmate and they had met and now it had been weeks and she had to figure all this out alone.

The internet didn't help. There were a few vague forums about not seeing color right away, about it being slow to drip over the comforting black and white of the world. She guessed it had to do with proximity of the soulmate, and found reassurance that she wasn't broken, that it was alright to not see rainbows seconds after her soulmate was found. But she stopped reading the forums when people started gushing about color coordinating outfits and dyeing their hair the same color as their soulmate's eyes. It hurt too much to think about.

* * *

Karen wasn't surprised to learn later that Wesley was connected to Wilson Fisk. Some things just fit, and maybe she was bitter, but James Wesley being the front man for Fisk _fit. _She made some dark comment about it to Ben, once, and he had sent her a look over his coffee cup (his shirt was a red and blue plaid, but red in a way that was different from karen's eyes after a long night and blue in a way that was just like letters on new york license plates). He had mastered a thousand and one ways to question what she was doing with a single eyebrow, a soft '_ever think you're too young to be this cynical?'_ passing between them.

"What," she said, more of a '_fight me I'm ready to break something' _than an actual question.

"Nothing," he said. "Just wondering if maybe you're _looking_ for trouble."

"Well, _yes._ I want to tear Fisk and everything that he's doing from the shadows."

"Nuh-uh. Not what I mean. That's not the sort of trouble I mean."

"Then _what_?!" she demanded. He gave her a look and she stared at her shoes (aqua like nothing in real life was, with a few little scuff marks she hadn't noticed).

"It's alright to just _be happy_, you know," he told her, and Karen almost laughed.

How the hell could she be happy when Fisk had literally gotten away with murder? How could she be happy when New York was hellish enough to require _the Devil of Hell's Kitchen_ to clean it up? How could she be happy when bombs were going off, when the police were corrupt, when Elena was dead, when Matt had the shit beat out of him by Fisk's goons, when Foggy lost some of his eternal sunshine and maybe even a bit of that ever-present love that let him see in color, when she was helpless and alone and drowning in every bad thing she could think of?

How could she be happy when she was _soulmates_ with a _monster?_

She felt her hate for Wesley with every new damn color that popped before her eyes. Sometimes she was happy for it, relieved that she knew what matched and what didn't, glad that she could see the grungy beauty of the city just after sunset. Others, like when she saw the strawberry red of the blood on Matt's face after he was attacked, or the amethyst smudges under Foggy's eyes that said he had had _yet another_ sleepless night, or the sickly yellow light that hung over seemingly every part of the city, she hated every single hue. Colors made her sick. Every time she wondered what the exact shade of brown her little brother's eyes were (because they weren't _just brown,_ nothing was ever _just_ one thing), or what her father's sandy blond hair might have been like before he stared going grey, it made her want to hunch over a toilet bowl (but she couldn't hate wesley for that, it was all her own damn fault they weren't around anymore).

She also hated Wesley for helping Fisk, but that was simple. It was a clean hate, compared to a lot of the loathing she felt in her life. At least he stayed true to what she always thought of him, his character staying very neatly in the Evil column. Honestly, the thing that bothered her the most was the fact that even though he knew and he knew _she_ knew, he still didn't acknowledge it. Didn't properly introduce himself, didn't invite her to lunch, didn't seem to have any concern about his whole world changing.

It wasn't that she felt slighted or anything (she, too, had gloriously and pointedly failed to make contact), it was just the fact that _he did not care._ That spoke so much more about the kind of person he was than his expensive cufflinks and horrendous employer.

Just thinking about him fueled her fire even more. She charged on with her crusade, relentless, determined, careless. But she couldn't help it. Every time she saw a photo or a news reel of Wesley standing behind Wilson Fisk, she saw red. It made her stupid.

Seeing Fisk's mother was _stupid. _She knew that. She didn't care. She found herself sneering at the gold of the walls, the lush jewel tones of the carpets, flowers, and paintings (mostly it was because she knew the mother of a monster was living in luxury when ben's wife was withering in some hole).

(and maybe a little because she despised everything that reminded her of the opulence wesley's life undoubtedly held.)

The thing that just summed up her life, though, the cherry on her shit-show sundae, was being abducted by her soulmate. Not in a cute, insane Romeo and Juliet kind of way. In a chloroform and abandoned warehouse sort of way.

He had the gall to joke about it. Wesley _stole her_, and he had the _gall_ to laugh over it.

It was disgusting, how calm he was, how poised. What sort of fucked up fantasy did she live in, where her soulmate could have been Prince Charming, so long as his kingdom was hell? Her heart was screaming, her head pounding, and she kept thinking that she had messed up, that she had messed up, New York was supposed to be a fresh start and yet she had ruined that too.

"You can't do this," she spat at him.

He was as handsome as the first day he had walked in and started ruining her life. He glanced around, shrugging slightly. "And yet…here we are."

It was the first time they had spoken, if she didn't count his one brutal line in the office, which she didn't and she should have but she couldn't because this was all such a wreck.

She cried. Damn her, she let tears fall in front of him. But, all things considered, she guessed she could forgive herself for that. She wouldn't have expected anyone else to be composed in her situation.

She was going to die. Her soulmate would probably do some unspeakable things to her and then her corpse would be found in a dumpster, in the river, in her home. Maybe never even found at all. She could barely fathom the lengths Fisk's lackey would go to.

Wesley was careful as he sat across from her, almost prim with his crossed legs and proper wording.

"You know, funny story, after the Union Allied article, I inquired as to whether you needed further attention," he said, like he wanted her to understand, like he needed her up to speed so they could have a proper, sophisticated conversation. And yet every damn word out of his mouth was an insult. "The feeling was you'd already done whatever damage you could, so it wasn't necessary. You were a nobody, a very small cog in a machine. So, an offer was made through a third party, a legal agreement, the oen you signed, in exchange for a reasonable amount of money. Well, reasonable to you."

She might have laughed, if her headache wasn't blinding and her fear threatening to strangle her every breath. At least they had equally bad opinions of each other. She was inconsequential, a tiny nuisance, a simple-minded, greedy, moralless bitch that was supposed to take his money, sit down, and shut up. And he was a cold-blooded kidnapper that would eliminate his soulmate without a word.

Karen kept waiting for him to mention it, to acknowledge that they were linked, that their DNA said that they should exist together in some strange, symbiotic way. She wondered how he had taken it. She wondered if each new color had made him as nauseous as her. Probably, considering the blandly disgusted way he said '_people like you'._

"Perhaps that's the way it was always going to be, perhaps we're…destined to follow a path none of us can see, only vaguely sense as it takes our hand, guiding us toward the inevitable," he murmured. Karen tensed, because if this was the moment he openly stated that they were cosmically linked, this was it.

"Is that supposed to _scare_ me?" she asked, because yeah, she was terrified. But not because of the inevitability of fate. She could have handled that, could have resigned herself to knowing for her whole life that she was connected to a monster, even if she never met him again. She could have done that.

He was almost pleasant as he said no, then put a gun on the table.

Wesley lost some of his civilized veneer when she failed to look away from the _gun on the table,_ impatient as he snapped at her to nod, to respond, to entertain him the way he wanted.

He leaned back in his chair, heaving a sigh before asking if she loved the city. She stared at him, trying to figure out where the hell he was going. He seemed on edge, calm enough but fraying the longer they spoke.

"I—I, uhm, I haven't been here long enough."

He nodded like he was actually considering her words. "I find a few days—a _week_ at most—is ample time to form an emotional response. Growing to love something really is simply…forgetting, slowly, what you dislike about it."

Was this some perverse '_I love you'_ (no her life couldn't be that horrible) (maybe, he was deadly serious) (no there was a fucking _gun_ on the table, what the hell was she thinking)?

"I'll be honest with you—the situation calls for it—I do not _love_ this city. The crush of the unwashed, the garbage stacked on the sidewalk, the _air_ that seems to adhere to your skin, a layer of filth that you can never seem to wash away." He sneered as he spoke, finally, truly every bit as disgusted as she was. And then he looked at her, really looked, and said, "And it gave me a soulmate I neither wanted, nor needed. Though, to your credit, you haven't hindered me any."

"You're too kind," she said, the words flat and dry like a brick. "Maybe you should move."

He laughed, and he actually seemed to find it funny. "I'm not here because I want to be, I'm here because I'm _needed._"

"By Fisk?"

And for the first time, it seemed like they were having an actual conversation. He seemed honest, telling her that Fisk _loved_ New York, that it made no sense to Wesley but that he went along with it because that was what had to be done. He told her that Fisk loved New York almost as much as he loved his mother.

Karen barely dared to move when he said that, eyes horribly, completely drawn to him as she realized _she_ had been the one to orchestrate her own demise. What perfect, consistent irony.

Wesley seemed considerate again, chewing on his thumb in a shocking display of humanity. It seemed almost like a compliment when he said she had made an impression on Fisk's mother, though it turned to a slap when he called her 'the nice blonde lady with the big blue eyes'.

Karen had forgotten her eyes were blue. They were probably the first things he had noticed, if he saw color even remotely the same way as her. Blue smacking into everything he knew, then the rest coming later.

Karen stopped listening after Wesley threatened Ben. She heard herself laugh when Wesley offered her a job, perhaps some perverse, belated gesture of affection. She heard herself ask questions, but she just stopped processing his eloquent speeches, his strange mix of barbarity and sophistication. She knew he didn't believe what he said, felt it in her bones.

She clicked back in again when he listed off every single one of her loved ones in a twisted future eulogy, her feelings kicking up from where instinct or maybe the chloroform had shoved them down. She felt the thrill of horror. She felt the lurch over the table. She felt the gun in her hand. She felt raw and terrified and afraid as he smiled his rose-lipped smile, expression laughing disbelief.

They stared at each other, perfect, grotesque opposites. Calm and terrified, still and shaky, threatening and threatened, yes and no all wrapped into two people that were _supposed _to be soulmates. That were supposed to take care of each other. That were supposed to be imperfect halves of a flawless whole. That were supposed to be simple.

Karen loathed him, and it wasn't simple at all.

And then Wesley smiled at her steely confidence. There was the slightest flicker of _something_, something that didn't belong to her, something like approval, affection, maybe personal interest, and with absolute horror, she realized it was from Wesley. They were so close, the moment so intense, that the sharp line between Karen and Wesley blurred into something amorphous, consuming, complete.

She gasped and pulled the trigger.

Karen felt every single one of the gunshots. She felt the kickback jerking her arms, felt the twisting her stomach, felt the hate of the action choking her, one bullet at a time. For a moment, Karen thought she would feel the bullets in her chest, the link between them going far beyond color and emotion and tearing into her flesh.

She didn't. She didn't feel a single one of the filthy red blossoms blooming across his chest.

She did, finally, feel worthy of being soulmates with a monster, though.


End file.
